Sega has uploaded a new TV commercial for Aliens: Colonial Marines onto Youtube. The trailer features scenes from the previously released Story trailer as well as some new bits including the Space Jockey chair and Derelict ship. Check it out below:

Just saw the commercial air on Tru TV. I have a high def television and the graphics looked very good. If this is what the graphics will actually look like when I slap it in my Xbox, I will be very pleased.

I have to disagree, it serves no purpose from a evolutionary point of view. I hope the game won't be oversaturated with horned and spiked xenos.

Whose to say that radioactive fallout from the destruction of the atmospheric processor didn't lead to some mutations in the xenomorph biology?

Additionally, other Alien media has already established the usefulness of the Alien tail/stinger. Although the facehuggers are primarily designed for impregnation, a sharp tail would certainly provide the creature an additional defense mechanism

No offence but must I remind you that we are talking about Giger's alien and not some cheap comic-radiation gimmick.

Additionally, other Alien media has already established the usefulness of the Alien tail/stinger. Although the facehuggers are primarily designed for impregnation, a sharp tail would certainly provide the creature an additional defense mechanism

Not to mention, it's an added distraction that keeps potential prey from defending their mouths, if only long enough for the facehugger to, you know, facehug.

I have to disagree, it serves no purpose from a evolutionary point of view. I hope the game won't be oversaturated with horned and spiked xenos.

Whose to say that radioactive fallout from the destruction of the atmospheric processor didn't lead to some mutations in the xenomorph biology?

Additionally, other Alien media has already established the usefulness of the Alien tail/stinger. Although the facehuggers are primarily designed for impregnation, a sharp tail would certainly provide the creature an additional defense mechanism

The smoke is obviously 2D - I know it's all about smokes and mirror and making things look nice with good frame-rate and certain sacrifices have to be made, but - at least in the trailer - its flatness was very obvious...

The design of the bigger spaceship is to me very uninspired, both in its architecture, its textures and relative lack of bump-mapping...

Your thoughts?

We'll for the most part you are right but it's all about perspective. The marine you see is only a stock marine (like stock villians they are generally going to have to look the same and not at all expressive only to make it seem that they are generic) If they were expressive, Jim Carey like, then you'll have a whole army of Jim Careys no? The smoke you see is actually really good quality rendered smoke in 2d much like the other from the start of the trailer. No complaints there. The ship looks uninteresting mainly because it is from the era of the Sulaco and is a military ship. Its meant to look armour plated as compared to the nostromo and its cargo (these would have to look much different).I don't see these gripes as nothing more than subjective artistic measure. They look fantastic to me. But you're baffled so maybe you can elaborate your fustrations.

[SHOT] works on the gearbox forums to make the pic a certain size. It can be helpful if the pic is too big and you want it to be smaller. It looks like Tonks edited your post and changed img to shot so the pics would fit better.

bro, whenever I see your nickname, I think of Predator crossed with Brubaker, you know that movie set in prison with Robert Redford and...Yaphett Koto :-D someone ought to make a poster out of it :-D

[SHOT] works on the gearbox forums to make the pic a certain size. It can be helpful if the pic is too big and you want it to be smaller. It looks like Tonks edited your post and changed img to shot so the pics would fit better.

I know, I was on my phone and I copied an entire post from another forum where I made it originally on my phone's internet browser then pasted it to a notepad and then pasted it here using tapatalk application. Something must have messed up in between by itself.

I know, I was on my phone and I copied an entire post from another forum where I made it originally on my phone's internet browser then pasted it to a notepad and then pasted it here using tapatalk application. Something must have messed up in between by itself.

The smoke is obviously 2D - I know it's all about smokes and mirror and making things look nice with good frame-rate and certain sacrifices have to be made, but - at least in the trailer - its flatness was very obvious...

My apologies for interrupting the validity conversation which I think could either make or break the game.

I have scoured the Internet with no avail looking for any demo release information. At the moment I can't find anything to say if they are going to do one at all for this game. My hope is as they did one for duke nukem there is still a possibility.

Because the people behind this are the ones who are making such a big deal out of needing to explain the magical Sulaco eggs - which is all well and fine. But to do so and then immediately introduce just-as-perplexing things which also wouldn't make terribly much sense, makes an instant mockery of that very mindset.

But that's not any different any anything any of the other movies have done, so I'm still not seeing the problem.

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The moment you make a boast like that, you actively invite criticism over your claim to be 100% canonical, because you, as the person in all those interviews you're pumping out, are the one who's making such a big deal over it.

The thing is, I suspect those boasts aren't necessarily aimed at the hardcore superfans who nitpick everything to death. It's meant at the more casual people in order to get them interested, and it's precisely because it's not a movie. It's a videogame. Making the claim that it's a faithful "official sequel" to a beloved classic movie that millions of people have seen is a pretty good way to get otherwise uninterested people to perk up and pay attention and possibly buy the game, especially if the footage and screenshots we've seen make it look like it's going to deliver on that promise.

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Remember all the debates before the last of the AVP games got released to us, about how/how 'Number Six' was meant to be more intelligent than the others? Where the facehuggers were meant to come from, every time it held a victim down for one? Turns out, the game never bothered to give explanations for any of those things. They were purely for aesthetic reasons and that was, literally, as deep as the thought process went.

You're saying that like it's a bad thing, and as if the movies themselves don't have instances like that. The motion trackers in 'Alien' and 'Aliens' literally cannot work as they're presented, but it doesn't matter because they're plot devices meant to get an emotional reaction out of the audience. Putting the ammo counter on the right side of the pulse rifle where Ripley can't see it (but the audience can) doesn't make any sense, but it sure hammers home how many rounds Ripley is firing and when she's low on ammo.Likewise the mystery facehuggers out of thin air are meant to get a reaction out of the player - you're literally facilitating a dude getting facehugged, in graphic and up-close detail. It's pretty crazy, and at the end of it it doesn't actually matter where the facehugger came from. If you're fixating on the "logistics" of the facehugger, you've missed the point.

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I just have severe reservations about the claims that everyone will accept it as the 'true' sequel - which, in itself, is mildly offensive, to be honest. I'm no great fan of 'Alien 3', but remarks like that unnecessarily devalue the hard work which went into making it.

I guess it depends on what people want to get out of the experience. Ever since 'Aliens' audiences have been clamoring for 'Aliens 2: Now With More Marines And Aliens And Stuff', and a lot of people were very, very disappointed with what 'Alien3' delivered. Colonial Marines looks like it is literally going to deliver on what a lot of people have been asking for for the better part of 30 years, and instead of being a movie with constraints like "budget" and "actor safety" and "practicality" and "2 hour run-time", it's going to be an interactive (multiplayer, even!) videogame that can be as long or as short as the developers want it to be.

And this is coming from someone who loves 'Alien3' and considers it their favorite Alien movie. Colonial Marines looks like it's going to be a hoot, but I don't think it's going to undermine 'Alien3' for me at all.

It's like a sequel in the sense that it will be a spiritual successor to Aliens but in video game form. They are translating something that was experienced in a movie into a video game basically. A video game could never realistically fit the most strict sense of the word canon under heavy scrutiny due to this translation so they took some creative liberties to make what they thought would be the best aliens experience. I will give them the benefit of doubt and try the game out.

It's simply laughable that they drone on and on about how "authentic" they're being, when they're demonstrably not (and that's not even talking about different Alien types - if you don't expect them in a game, no matter how silly they seem, you're just naive).

So? Literally every movie after 'Alien' (up to and including 'Prometheus') have differences and have introduced new elements or retconned things assumed to be true in the prior movies, and people have gotten over it. What makes this game a special case where introducing new things is suddenly forbidden?

Because the people behind this are the ones who are making such a big deal out of needing to explain the magical Sulaco eggs - which is all well and fine. But to do so and then immediately introduce just-as-perplexing things which also wouldn't make terribly much sense, makes an instant mockery of that very mindset.

Like I've said before, I'm open to being pleasantly surprised. I'm just not seeing anything which gives me much hope for that.

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Why? Does it really matter?

It doesn't.

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I still think my Left 4 Dead example is plenty applicable, and for reasons The Runner demonstrated on prior pages. To take a movie example, it's like people who complained that '28 Days Later' wasn't a "zombie" movie strictly because the movie didn't actually feature the dead coming back to life, and because the "zombies" run. Despite the movie following all the conventions of a typical "zombie apocalypse" movie. It's hardly an isolated case, too - Stephen King's book 'Cell' doesn't feature the undead, but the book is still a "zombie" book and is even dedicated to George Romero. Likewise, John Carpenter's original 'Assault on Precinct 13' is a zombie siege movie, but doesn't feature any conventional George Romero zombies.

But like I said, the analogy fails precisely because none of those properties are sequels/prequels to one another. They're not set in the same continuity. Just using the same generic plot device. You can compare the sharks from 'Jaws' to the ones in 'Deep Blue Sea', but that's all it'll ever be; a speculative comparison. The process of comparing them doesn't carry any weight.

The moment one is meant to be set in the other's continuity, then comparisons become much more valid.

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All 4 Alien movies are radically different from each other in tone, style, and execution, but (most) people still consider them to be legitimate Alien stories. Colonial Marines doesn't appear to be straying terribly far from the 'Aliens' mold other than dialing everything up to 11 (more Marines, more military hardware, more Aliens) and certainly isn't any different from the other movies than they are compared to each other. They just happen to be tossing in some Alien enemy varieties because it's still a videogame, and frankly I find that completely forgivable.

But that's the crux of the matter. If they'd just said, "Hey, we're making a game, have fun with it!" Nobody would care. But they repeatedly went over that line, in the same way as those behind 'Requiem' repeatedly went over the line from saying, "Hey, we're making a movie, have fun," to constant references of how it was going to be 'gritty' and totally, 100% non-canon breaking, whatsoever. Only for the central plank of it to revolve around the hyper-bizarre Predalien shenanigans.

The moment you make a boast like that, you actively invite criticism over your claim to be 100% canonical, because you, as the person in all those interviews you're pumping out, are the one who's making such a big deal over it.

Will the game be fun? Maybe. Who knows?

Will the game fit in with continuity? Maybe we'll get plausible explanations for all the new Alien types, how there's a new Queen, how above-ground colony facilities survived in the remarkable state they did and so on, but the signs aren't looking good... Especially in light of:

Hicks surviving, which has to be one of the most perplexing things, so far.

Remember all the debates before the last of the AVP games got released to us, about how/how 'Number Six' was meant to be more intelligent than the others? Where the facehuggers were meant to come from, every time it held a victim down for one? Turns out, the game never bothered to give explanations for any of those things. They were purely for aesthetic reasons and that was, literally, as deep as the thought process went.

I hope it will be fun. I hope that it will give lots of people happiness. I just have severe reservations about the claims that everyone will accept it as the 'true' sequel - which, in itself, is mildly offensive, to be honest. I'm no great fan of 'Alien 3', but remarks like that unnecessarily devalue the hard work which went into making it.

the only time those differences need to be reconciled is if they're set in the same continuity (or, obviously, if they're claiming they're based on real legends, in which case you're able to quibble over whether it took artistic licence with whatever historical evidence they're supposedly based on).

So? Literally every movie after 'Alien' (up to and including 'Prometheus') have differences and have introduced new elements or retconned things assumed to be true in the prior movies, and people have gotten over it. What makes this game a special case where introducing new things is suddenly forbidden?

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I do, however, feel safe in saying that pre-emptively declaring it to be 100% official canon was a mistake.

Why? Does it really matter?

I still think my Left 4 Dead example is plenty applicable, and for reasons The Runner demonstrated on prior pages. To take a movie example, it's like people who complained that '28 Days Later' wasn't a "zombie" movie strictly because the movie didn't actually feature the dead coming back to life, and because the "zombies" run. Despite the movie following all the conventions of a typical "zombie apocalypse" movie. It's hardly an isolated case, too - Stephen King's book 'Cell' doesn't feature the undead, but the book is still a "zombie" book and is even dedicated to George Romero. Likewise, John Carpenter's original 'Assault on Precinct 13' is a zombie siege movie, but doesn't feature any conventional George Romero zombies.

All 4 Alien movies are radically different from each other in tone, style, and execution, but (most) people still consider them to be legitimate Alien stories. Colonial Marines doesn't appear to be straying terribly far from the 'Aliens' mold other than dialing everything up to 11 (more Marines, more military hardware, more Aliens) and certainly isn't any different from the other movies than they are compared to each other. They just happen to be tossing in some Alien enemy varieties because it's still a videogame, and frankly I find that completely forgivable.

I'm 100% sure that's for gameplay purposes. It's sort of like saying that the Special Infected in Left 4 Dead make the game no longer an "authentic" zombie game. It's sort of not seeing the forest for the trees.

It's not the same thing. You're comparing genres, whereas this is comparing specific products from within a single franchise.

You can create completely different films which happen to involve extremely differing portrayals of vampires. They'd both be 'vampire movies', but the only time those differences need to be reconciled is if they're set in the same continuity (or, obviously, if they're claiming they're based on real legends, in which case you're able to quibble over whether it took artistic licence with whatever historical evidence they're supposedly based on).

Here, we're talking about something set in the same continuity. Like Hicks, SM and others have said, it may well turn out to be a really satisfying gaming experience, but they've kind of dug themselves into a hole by almost constantly reinforcing the whole it's-a-true-sequel-and-everyone-must-acknowledge-it-as-such thing. By doing that, they shifted the focus from whether it'll simply be any fun, to needing to compare it against the standards of a cinematic classic.

If it wasn't for that, the only thing we'd be comparing with the series it's set in would be the atmosphere - and that's difficult to judge outside of choreographed advertising.

I'm open to it being entertaining. I do, however, feel safe in saying that pre-emptively declaring it to be 100% official canon was a mistake.